Flickchart: Crack for Movie Lovers

I almost feel like I have to put a warning up about this before writing anything else, because it is addictive as hell, but really fun to boot.

I just discovered flickchart today. It's basic set-up for those that don't know is very simple, but oh so fun. Two film titles will appear in front of you (Most of which are with a poster) and you select one of them and move on to the next pair. It starts ranking all of your favorite films as they all go head to head. It's entirely random if you do it under the "All Movies" section. This almost makes it more fun when you have stuff like "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves" vs. "Pootietang." However, you can also rank among specific genres and even start having your top films go head to head when you have enough chosen.

I've ranked close to a 1,000 films, so I will show you my top 20. It's fairly interesting how everything turns out:

My Top 20 (So Far)
1. Psycho (1960)
2. Dangerous Liasons (1988)
3. The Thing (1982)
4. The Godfather (1972)
5. Planet of the Apes (1968)
6. The Godfather Part II (1974)
7. Casablanca (1943)
8. North by Northwest (1959)
9. Chinatown (1974)
10. Layer Cake (2004)
11. Harold and Maude (1972)
12. Raising Arizona (1987)
13. Platoon (1986)
14. Angel Heart (1987)
15. Rocky (1976)
16. The Birds (1963)
17. Fargo (1996)
18. Superman II (1981)
19. Ed Wood (1994)
20. Heat (1995)

While this would probably not be close to my personal top twenty, this is a good sampling of my tastes. Your also limited to the titles they have on the site, which is quite a few, but they keep adding. There is a good interview with the founders on aintitcool which was where I first heard about it.

I mean "Raising Arizona" is probably not even one of my five favorite Coen brothers films nor is "The Birds" one of my ten favorite Hitchcock films. I still don't know why "Layer Cake" wont' go anywhere. It was one of the first films I ranked and it keeps popping up against awful films so it sticks around. The first twenty you rank will be your top twenty and will fall later on as you start ranking others. I love "Layer Cake," but I'm not sure it would even be in my top 200.

The site is in its early stages; they claim they are still beta testing but then say they are past that. There doesn't seem to be a huge selection of older Foreign films, so Mike, your list will probably be pretty crazy at first. So I don't know, but it's a lot of fun, and I figured you guys would get a kick out of it.